Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/387

 collection of poems. It consists of (1) ‘Miscellanies,’ including, with his juvenile pieces, many later poems, especially the spirited ‘Chronicle’ and the fine elegies on Harvey and Crashaw; (2) ‘The Mistress,’ reprinted from the edition of 1647. (3) ‘Pindarique Odes;’ (4) the ‘Davideis;’ four books out of twelve as originally designed. This ponderous epic was chiefly written at college, and Cowley says that he has now neither the leisure nor the appetite to finish it. There is quite enough as it is. The preface refers to an unfinished poem ‘On the Civil War.’ A poem professing to be the one mentioned was published in 1679, and is in later collections. He now took to medicine, as a blind, according to Sprat, for his real designs. He was created M.D. at Oxford on 2 Dec. 1657, by an order from the government, which, according to Wood, gave offence to his friends. He retired to ‘a fruitful part of Kent to pursue the study of simples,’ and wrote a Latin poem, ‘Plantarum Libri duo’ (1662); it was included in ‘Poemata Latina in quibus continentur sex Libri Plantarum et unus Miscellaniorum,’ 1668 (2nd ed. 1678).

Cowley again retired to France. He tried to put himself forward at the Restoration. In 1660 he published a heavy ‘Ode upon the Blessed Restoration …’ In 1661 appeared his fine ‘Vision, concerning his late pretended Highness, Cromwell the Wicked; containing a Discourse in Vindication of him by a pretended Angel and the confutation thereof by the author, Abraham Cowley.’ In 1661 appeared also ‘A Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy.’ He also wrote an ‘Ode to the Royal Society.’ ‘Dr. Cowley’ took an interest, like all the cultivated men of the time, in the foundation of this society, and was one of the first members incorporated (, Royal Society, i. 4). He was associated with Evelyn and others in a project for the foundation of a philosophical college, for which he gives a plan in his ‘Essays.’ His ‘Ode to Hobbes’ gives further proof of his interest in new speculations. In 1663 appeared ‘Verses upon several occasions’ (after a piratical publication in Dublin). In one of these, called ‘The Complaint,’ he describes himself as ‘the melancholy Cowley,’ and bewails his neglect. He applied unsuccessfully for the mastership of the Savoy (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1661–2, p. 210). Some verses of the ‘Session of the Poets’ in ‘State Poems’ 1697 allude to this and the failure of his play:—

His claims were at last acknowledged by a favourable lease of the queen's lands obtained for him by the Earl of St. Albans and the Duke of Buckingham. He was now enabled to live at his ease in the retirement which he often professed to love. He settled at Barn Elms, and afterwards in the ‘Porch House’ at Chertsey. He removed thither in April 1665. His health declined, and from a letter to Sprat, 21 May 1665, preserved by Peck, we find that his tenants did not pay their rents, and that a fall had injured his ribs. He died on 28 July 1667; Sprat declares that his death was occasioned by his ‘very delight in the country and the fields.’ He caught cold, according to Sprat, after apparently recovering from his accident, by staying out too long ‘amongst his labourers in the meadows.’ A different tradition, preserved by Pope (Spence's Anecdotes, p. 13), states that Cowley and Sprat came home late from a too jovial dinner with a neighbour and had to pass the night under a hedge. Mr. Stebbing points out that there is probably some confusion with a ‘dean’ mentioned in a letter from Cowley to Sprat, probably the nickname of some convivial neighbour. Warton says that his income was about 300l. a year, and that in his last years he avoided female society. He was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey, near Chaucer and Spenser, and Charles II declared that he had not left a better man behind him in England. His will (dated 28 Sept. 1665) leaves the care of his works to Sprat. The property is left to his brother Thomas, with a good many small legacies. He gave some books to Trinity College. Cowley's house is now called by his name, and is on the west side of Guildford Street, near the railway station. The porch from which it was named was removed by Alderman Clarke, a later occupant of the house, in 1786 (, Environs of London).

Cowley's reputation was at its highest during his lifetime, when he was regarded as the model of cultivated poetry. Dryden's frequent references to Cowley show that his reputation was beginning to decline. Dryden says (Essay on Heroic Plays, 1672) that ‘his authority is almost sacred to me.’ He elsewhere calls Cowley the darling of his youth (Essay on Satire, 1693). He complains of the ‘Davideis’ as full of ‘points of wit and quirks of epigram’ (Essay on Satire). He greatly prefers the ‘Pindaric’ odes to the ‘Mistress,’ and thinks Cowley's latest com-